The Westerners’ Perspective of Islam expressed in non-diplomatic street language (my appologies for its tone and lack of proper respect, this was part of a speech delivered by an elected European official to his official legislative body with reference to country removed):
"Approximately 1400 years ago war was declared on the West by an ideology of hate and violence which arose at the time and was proclaimed by a barbarian who called himself the Prophet Mohammed.
The foundation of the Islamic faith, is the Koran. The Koran’s core theme is about the duty of all Muslims to fight non-Muslims: an Islamic Mein Kampf, in which fight means war, jihad. The Koran is above all a book of war, a call to butcher non-Muslims (2:191, 3:141, 4:91, 5:3), to roast them (4:56, 69:30-69:32), and to cause bloodbaths amongst them (47:4). Jews are compared to monkeys and pigs (2:65, 5:60, 7:166), while people who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God must according to the Koran be fought (9:30).
We in the West experience many people who call themselves Muslims and who respect our laws. However, the Koran does have something against them. For it is stated in the Koran in Sura 2, verse 85, that those believers who do not believe in everything the Koran states will be humiliated and receive the severest punishment; which means that they will roast in Hell. In other words, people who call themselves Muslims but who do not believe, for example, in Sura 9, verse 30, which states that Jews and Christians must be fought, or, for example, in Sura 5, verse 38, which states that the hand of a thief must be cut off, such people will be humiliated and roast in Hell. Note that it is not the Western mind simply making this up. All this can be found in the Koran. The Koran also states that Muslims who believe in only part of the Koran are in fact apostates, and we know what has to happen to apostates. They have to be killed.
The Koran incites to hatred and calls for murder and mayhem. The Koran is a dangerous book; a book which is completely against our democratic institutions.
There is no such thing as “moderate Islam”. As Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said, “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” Islam is in pursuit of dominance. It wishes to exact its imperialist agenda by force on a worldwide scale (8:39). This is clear from European history.
Fortunately, the first Islamic invasion of Europe was stopped at Poitiers in 732; the second in Vienna in 1683. Let us ensure that the third Islamic invasion, which is currently in full spate, will be stopped too in spite of its insidious nature and notwithstanding the fact that, in contrast to the 8th and 17th centuries, it has no need for an Islamic army because the scared “dhimmis” in the West, left their doors wide open to Islam and Muslims.
Apart from conquest, Islam is also bent on installing a totally different form of law and order, namely Sharia law. This makes Islam, apart from a religion for hundreds of millions of Muslims also, and in particular, a political ideology (with political/constitutional/Islamic basic values, etc). Islam is an ideology without any respect for others; not for Christians, not for Jews, not for non-believers and not for apostates. Islam aims to dominate, subject, kill and wage war.
The Islamic incursion must be stopped. Islam is the Trojan Horse in Europe. If Westerners do not stop Islamification now, Eurabia and Netherabia will just be a matter of time. One century ago, there were approximately 50 Muslims in the Netherlands. Today, there are about 1 million Muslims in the Netherlands. Where will it end? We are heading for the end of European civilization as we know it."
....end of speech...
Muslims, Christians, and Jews all confront these harsh discussion points through inter-religious and cultural dialogue in the spirit they are all brothers in worship with the God of Abraham.
A rabbi, an imam and a priest discuss their 'painful verses'
By The Associated Press
Haaretz English edition,
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/990622.html
A rabbi, an imam and a priest on Thursday sat down to discuss the most sensitive parts of their sacred scriptures, the verses that offend or anger other faiths.
But instead of the Catholic criticizing Koran quotes or the Jew complaining about a Gospel, each took objectionable passages from his own holy book and tried to explain them to the others.
"Les Versets douloureux" (The Painful Verses), the result of their work, is an unusual book that aims to move interfaith dialogue beyond polite meetings to discuss issues that create tensions among Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Rabbi David Meyer, the driving force behind the project, said his frustration with routine interfaith meetings that avoided tough issues prompted him to seek a different kind of dialogue with Sohaib Bencheikh and Rev. Yves Simoens S.J.
"For a real dialogue, we have to have the courage to confront difficult things," the rabbi of the International Jewish Center in
The book marked a new approach in interfaith dialogue. While religious leaders have been meeting for decades, an upswing in contacts in recent years reflects a feeling they need to work even more closely to foster better understanding.
Bensheikh, head of the Higher Institute of Islamic Sciences in Marseille, stressed the book was "not a dialogue between institutions. It's the work of three believers, that's all."
Meyer said he got the idea when members of his congregation asked how he could dialogue with Muslims when they had passages hostile to Jews in the Koran. "I knew I could find passages in Jewish texts that would make them shudder," he said.
Simoens, professor of scripture at the Centre Sevres faculty of philosophy and Catholic theology in
One of Islam's "painful verses," Bencheikh said, was the hadith "Kill he who changes his religion." This saying of the Prophet Mohammed is used to outlaw apostasy in some Muslim states and, in a very few, to threaten ex-Muslims with death.
"This is an aberration," he said. Apostasy was seen as treason during the turbulent early years when Islam was expanding and faith was equivalent to citizenship in the new empire. This no longer applied in the modern era, he said.
Among Meyer's examples was the command in the Torah to the Israelites to wipe out the rival Amalekite tribe, which amounted to asking Jews to commit genocide.
Two other "painful verses" were God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, which seemed to justify killing in the name of religion, and a Talmudic text allowing Jews to steal from non-Jews, he said.
"There is no text without interpretation," said Meyer, who in the book cited several other Jewish writings to provide a wider context that weakened their impact.
Simoens argued the Gospel of John, the Evangelist accused of being a source of Christian anti-Semitism, was not anti-Jewish an
"There are the effects of a vulgarisation of exegesis," he said. He called the view of John as anti-Semitic "an ideology."
Asked how widely his liberal views were shared in the Islamic world, Bencheikh said many Muslim states kept tight control over religion and blocked reforms.
But he said rigid readings of Islamic texts would give way to deeper interpretations. Islam was in a "tunnel period," he said: "Our generation has lost the erudition of old without replacing it with modern thought."
Meyer said the trio hoped the book would be translated into other languages to help dialogue elsewhere in
Asked if they planned another book, Meyer was wary of tackling a new project or hitting the usual conference trail.
"If we're invited for conferences with dialogue groups, we'll just be preaching to the converted," he said.
"The problem is to transmit this message in one's own community," he explained. "We need to communicate this to people who need to hear it. We're thinking how to do this now.